Lizy Tish Knits

…among other things

Social worker turned yarn shop owner turned knitting teacher, blogger and proofreader. Combine that with my love of reading, cooking and being a pit crew chief for my drag racing husband and we have a pretty interesting life. So, I blog about it.

Tag Archives: spring

I’m in love. I know, you think you already know that because Paul is the best husband ever, as evidenced here on this blog quite often. But really, what I’m in love with today is this wonderful invention:

The hot water heater. For 7 1/2 years, we had a “tankless” water heating system that was not terribly hot at it’s hottest and didn’t even stay not-terribly-hot for terribly long. Let me tell you, the winters are long and the quick showers seem even longer when you have water like that. And on top of that, the water pressure was terrible, which makes showers for me that much more miserable because I have thick hair and showers take even ten times more longer (don’t talk to me about that grammar…it’s says what I mean) because of that. So, now that this very long eighth winter has ended and the weather is warming up, we got an electric water heater with a 50-gallon-nice-and-hot-with-no-chance-of-running-out-of-hot-water-and-Paul-rigged-it-to-have-good-water-pressur tank. Despite it coming at the end of the longest, coldest winter in the history of the world…. Oh. My. Gosh. What a difference. Nice, consistent, hot water with consistent, strong water pressure. I feel like we won the lottery.

But do you know what I also love? That the winter has ended! Things up here on the hill happen a little slower than down in town, but here are some signs…

Flowering everything.

Red Maple:

Forsythia – in town they are totally bloomed, but that’s ok. These for-now-few are beautiful.

Flowering crabapple:

Bleeding heart:

Daffodils and rhododendron:

If you look carefully in middle, near the tops of the reeds, there is a red-winged black bird:

I think he and/or some other birds are nesting in there. I heard a lot of rustling and saw three different kinds of birds fly out of there.

A couple of nuisance-y things too, such as the groundhog hole under the shed:

And seeing the lilies growing amongst the brick pieces that fell off our chimney this winter, necessitating some potentially not-fun (read: expensive) fixing:

But even the nuisance-y things don’t seem too terrible. I think the groundhog is cute. (Paul doesn’t).

And the last thing I love (for today anyway) are these Not Derby Pie Bars from Smitten Kitchen:

Buttery crust, chocolate, and pecans. Tastes like a not-so-sweet pecan pie. Oh. My. Gosh. (which I’ve now said twice in this blog post)…

And if you eat them while they are still warm, or put the in the microwave for a few seconds…… Just go. Make them.

Like this:

3) It’s ok. Spring is in my mind and I’m pretending things are all Spring, all the time. I’m picturing these crocuses:

and these daffodils:

in full bloom (I’m not going to worry they will die because they thought they were supposed to bloom but then it was 10 degrees last night), with sunshine and blue sky and a nice warm breeze.

4) I’m working on my Spring tee, with cotton yarn:

Second Story Tee, from the new Spring Interweave KNITS magazine, using Cascade Cotton Rich DK (which has been discontinued). I’ve got about 1/2 the back done. The front is the same but the diagonal is reversed. I want to finish it so I can wear it as soon as the weather is nice. However. It’s getting a little dull knitting the same pattern over and over and over, with no shaping. Maybe I should break out another unfinished thing to work on in between….

5) I’m also in the mood to bake something Spring-y (light and refreshing) like these lemon bars. But first it will be two more batches of the Doughnut Muffins I made last week, to bring to my classes at The Spinning Room tomorrow.

6) I also Sprung into action (see what I did there? “sprung”!) and actually put buttons on my Tea Leaves Cardigan:

I just love this sweater. I love the color. I love how it fits. I love that it’s cozy on the first day of Spring (when the weather is not exactly Spring-y).

Share this:

Like this:

Oh my gosh – I think Spring is finally here! How do I know? For one thing, our pond finally un-froze two days ago:

And yesterday morning, I did my yearly wake-up-at-6:30-am-to-the-loud-sound-of-two-Canada-geese-honking-and-landing-in-our-pond-then-run-out-in-the-backyard-in-my-bright-pink-robe-waving-my-arms-and-shooshing-them-away ritual. The mallard couple I look forward to seeing. Huge, annoying, Canada geese? Not so much.

The snow is almost gone:

And I got to go outside with the doodlebugs several times to run on the basketball court, wave to our shadows and go on the swings and slide:

And this weekend it is supposed to be near 70 degrees which is so welcome after the cold!

I like it. But it is VERY heavy. Fourteen ounces of yarn. That is almost a pound and believe it or not, that feels pretty heavy when it’s around your neck. It will keep someone very warm. I’m not sure that it will be me.

I like the pattern but knitting 880 yards of yarn, in order to get the most out of the yarn, got incredibly BORING. It came down to the challenge of not giving up because it was boring and knitting like crazy to just. get. it. done. It ended up being 64″ long and here is what was left:

A lot of that knitting-to-get-it-done was because of having it as a sample for a class. However. I think I’ve decided NOT to teach it as a class. Here is why: 1) With the number of stitches the pattern says to cast on, one could not use a 16″ circular needle to knit it. And I do not think many will want to knit a very long, heavy scarf using double pointed needles. I certainly wouldn’t. (I had cast on many more stitches because I wanted the scarf wider, so it wasn’t a problem for me.) 2) Because of this, I would have to figure out the minimum number of stitches needed to cast on, and then try to estimate how much yarn would be needed, which is hard to do when I haven’t knitted that size. (and I am NOT knitting another…) 3) And if I did make those modifications, I don’t want to have someone purchase a pattern that they mostly won’t be following, except for a chart. So, the plans for that class have mostly been scrapped.

So, now that the scarf class is scrapped, I’ve been knitting like crazy on the Vine Lace Vest for another class:

It is going very quickly. That is the back and part of the left front. I had a little snafoo trying to get the lace pattern correct after binding off for the neck, but now I’m flying along again. Hoping to finish this very soon so I can get started knitting with this:

A new cotton/acrylic blend called Avalonthat just came in to The Spinning Room. Lots of beautiful colors and a great yarn for springy/summery things. Unfortunately this yarn is for a stealth project that I can’t tell you about.

That’s it for today. Next time, I’ll tell you about the yummy things I made in the kitchen recently….

LizyTishKnits is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, the Craftsy affiliate program, and the Tailwind affiliate program, affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, craftsy.com and tailwind.com.